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A June 11 photo shows House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, leaving House Speaker John Boehner’s on Capitol Hill in Washington. Republican colleagues elected McCarthy as elected House majority leader Thursday. (Photo by J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press)

The shocking defeat of the House of Representatives’ Republican leader by an even more conservative candidate in a Virginia primary election earlier this month is widely seen as a setback for national immigration reform efforts. Reformers should, indeed, be displeased. But they should not give up.

With Congressman Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, poised to become the new majority leader, reform advocates may have a more receptive target for their arguments, a representative of an agricultural district who knows the sound economic arguments for an immigration overhaul.

Just how receptive McCarthy is to giving the issue a full congressional airing may be clearer in the next few weeks. The man now responsible for deciding which bills come to the floor is setting his first legislative agenda. He should get an earful from immigration reformers, especially California business leaders who see that a balanced package of changes will boost the economy by providing more high- and low-skilled workers, giving business owners more freedom to hire them, and unlocking billions of dollars in consumer spending.

This remains an uphill political battle.

When Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, was upset in a primary by college professor Dave Brat, one of the plausible explanations was that local tea party supporters were angry with Cantor for taking what they saw as a “soft” stance on immigration. In Brat voters’ minds, Cantor sinned by failing to categorically rule out changes that would create legal residency to some undocumented immigrants, such as those who were brought to the United States as children or served in the U.S. military. Opponents detest giving “amnesty” to immigration lawbreakers, and they have a very loose definition of the word.

The fallout of Cantor’s loss, say Washington-watchers, is that other Republicans will run screaming from any hint of immigration reform for fear that willingness to even discuss the subject will be used against them by conservative hard-liners in their next primaries.

This underscores the key dynamic in immigration-reform politics: As long as Republicans have a majority in the House, the chance of legislation depends less on bridging the gap between Republicans and Democrats than on settling differences among Republicans.

McCarthy’s perspective as a Californian should be helpful as he moves up from the position of majority whip to become the highest-ranking House Republican ever from this state.

For one thing, McCarthy should understand how much the Republican Party’s harsh positions on immigration have hurt the GOP with an increasingly Latino California electorate. A more welcoming approach by McCarthy could help the party’s revival in the state.

More substantially, McCarthy knows the immigration issue from the ground up. In his 23rd District, which covers most of Kern and Tulare counties and the Antelope Valley tip of Los Angeles County, the soil is worked by migrant laborers. The overwhelmingly Republican district’s population is 35 percent Hispanic. (It’s 50 percent white.)

It’s not reform-minded Hispanics, or the activists who regularly picket his district office, whom McCarthy most needs to hear from about immigration. It’s the business community, including state and local chambers of commerce and pro-reform Republicans like Bakersfield Mayor Harvey Hall.

Last fall, surveys by a Republican-affiliated polling company found that McCarthy is one of several California congressmen in conservative districts who would gain, not lose, voters’ support if they backed a bill allowing a 13-year path to citizenship to undocumented immigrants who pay a penalty, learn English, pass a criminal background check and pay taxes.

This editorial board likes the principles behind the 2013 Senate bill that would do many of those things and step up border security and enforcement. That bill stalled in the House because Speaker John Boehner and Cantor block votes on any bill that lacks majority Republican support.

Perhaps Boehner-McCarthy leadership will be no different. But McCarthy has sounded open to a pathway to legal status, if not outright citizenship. His ascent gives a California viewpoint on immigration a voice in the House.